Vigo Auguste DemantFRAI^[9] (1893 – 1983), known asV. A. Demant, was an EnglishAnglican priest, theologian, and social commentator. He was one of the 14 committee members who served on theWolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution.

Demant was born on 8 November 1893 inNewcastle upon Tyne, England.^[10] He was educated in Newcastle, England andTournan, France.^[11][12] He studied engineering atArmstrong College, Durham.^[10][13] He then studiedtheology atManchester College, Oxford.^[11][13][14]

Demant had originally intended to become aUnitarianminister, but became attracted toCatholicism while studying at theUniversity of Oxford^[13] and was received into theChurch of England in 1918.^[10] He trained forHoly Orders atEly Theological College, anAnglo-Catholictheological college inEly, Cambridgeshire.^[11]

Demant wasordained as adeacon in 1919 and as apriest in 1920.^[15] He servedcuracies atSt Thomas the Martyr's Church, Oxford; St Michael and All Angels Church, Summertown, Oxford; St Nicholas' Church, Plumstead, London; and All Saints' Church, Highgate, London.^[16] From 1929 to 1933, he was an assistant priest atSt Silas Church, Kentish Town.^[17]

Demant becameVicar ofSt John the Divine, Richmond, in 1933 and nine years later he became acanon ofSt Paul's Cathedral.^[18] He served as canon chancellor of the cathedral from 1942 to 1948 and as canon treasurer from 1948 to 1949.^[1] He was a canon ofChrist Church, Oxford, andRegius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at theUniversity of Oxford from 1949 to 1971.^[11]

Demant served on the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution.^[19] The committee's report, known as theWolfenden report^[20][21] was published in September 1957 and recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence."^[22]

Demant was a regular broadcaster on theBBC'sThird Programme in the 1950s.^[23] He supportedMaurice Reckitt in founding the Christendom Trust to encourage and fund research into the application of Christian social thought.

Demant retired from his post at Oxford to a cottage inHeadington,Oxfordshire, in 1971.^[24] He died there on 3 March 1983 at the age of 89.^[25]

• The Just Price (1930)
• This Unemployment: Disaster or Opportunity? (1932)
• God, Man and Society: An Introduction to Christian Sociology (1933)
• Christian Polity (1936)^[26]
• The Religious Prospect (1939)^[27]
• Theology of Society: More Essays in Christian Polity (1947)^[27]
• Our Culture: Its Christian Roots and Present Crisis (1947)^[28]
• The Responsibility and Scope of Pastoral Theology To-Day (1950)^[26]
• Religion and the Decline of Capitalism (1952)
• The Elements of Christianity (1955)
• A Two-Way Religion (1957)
• Christian Sex Ethics (1963)^[27]
• The Idea of a Natural Order (1966)
• Why the Christian Priesthood Is Male (1972)^[26]

• David Nicholls (theologian)
• Maurice Reckitt